Family Braids

This last week, I have been working on entering various family trees. First, I finished the Fons family. Then I moved on to several family trees which show the intertwining of the Filip, Mateja and Kleba families. (These family names had various spellings over time, but for the purposes of this post, I'll just stick to one each because this is going to be confusing enough as it is.)

The Filip, Mateja and Kleba families form what I like to call a “family braid.” A braid occurs when two or more families inter-marry multiple times over several generations. ( As we all know from “I Am My Own Grandpa,” it can make describing the relationships very confusing.) This particular braid went like this:

Joannes Kleba and Justina (Plichta) Kleba had at least five children. The oldest, Paulina, married Joseph Mateja in Poland. Paulina's sister, Victoria, married Joseph's first cousin, Victor. So now we have two couples: Joseph and Paulina (Kleba) Mateja and Victor and Victoria (Kleba) Mateja.

Meanwhile, Plaulina and Victoria's sister, Theresia, married Frank Filip and their brother Joseph married Martha Filip. However, Frank and Martha Filip were not brother and sister, they were first cousins. Martha was the daughter of August Filip and Mary (Klinkosz) Filip and Frank was the son of Frank Filip and Anna Bejrowski Filip.

Simple enough you say, that's just some siblings marrying some people that were first cousins to one another. Yes, EXCEPT, the mother of Pauline and Joseph Mateja was Pauline (Filip) Mateja, the sister of Frank Filip. No, not the Frank Filip who married Theresia Kleba, but HIS father.

Now, remember that I mentioned that Joseph Mateja and Victor Mateja were first cousins, that's because their mothers, Pauline and Julianna were sisters. You remember Pauline (Filip) Mateja. I just mentioned her. She's the sister of Frank Filip whose son, Frank Filip married Theresia Kleba. Anyway, Pauline (Filip) Mateja and Frank Filip had a sister, Julianna and she's the mother of Victor Mateja, which is why Victor Mateja and Albert Mateja (who married the sisters of Theresia Kleba) are first cousins.

But wait. If Victor Mateja and Joseph Mateja are first cousins because their mothers are sisters, why do they have the same last name? Well, Victor's father was Joseph Mateja. Of course, not that Joseph Mateja, but one generation up. And the father of Joseph Mateja (first cousin and brother-in-law of Victor Mateja) was Albert Mateja. It seems likely that Joseph Mateja and Albert Mateja were related, but at this point, we don't know how.

Now, about Victor Mateja and Victoria (Kleba) Mateja. Victor died in 1938 and Victoria remarried. I guessed she liked her in-laws, because she married Alexander Mateja, her first husband's brother.

One last twist to knot things up. I mentioned it up above, but you might have forgotten: Pauline (Filip) Mateja, Frank Filip and Julianna (Filip) Mateja had a brother, August. August married Mary Klinkosz. August Filip and Mary (Klinkosz) Filip had several children, one of whom was the Martha Filip who married Joseph Kleba. However, August Filip died young, so Mary Klinkosz married Frank Kitzke. The families must have known one another. Not only had they been in the same brawl, but Frank Kitzke's brother and sister-in-law, Gustaf (August) Kitzke and Victoria (Rosploch) Kitzke were god parents to Victora (Kleba) Mateja, the widow of Victor Mateja and bride of Victor's brother, Alexander Mateja. Anyway, one of Frank and Mary's children (and remember, Mary is the widow of August Filip) was Clara Kitzke. She married Paul Friday, and they had one daughter, Clara Friday, who apparently went by “Mavis”. Mavis married Victor Raymond Mateja, who was the son of Victor Mateja and Victoria (Kleba) Mateja, which is one of the couples we started with.

Names added:  Bertling, Binkowski, Bolka, Gerlich, Grim, Hueske, Kazmierczak, Keniaz, Liban, Maczewski, Malischewsky, Perszowski, Polcyn, Starost, Todryk

Featured Profile #2 - Andrzej Boncel

Andrzej (Andrew) Boncel (1860-1901)

Nowadays, the eight-hour workday is thoroughly engrained into our American way of life, but it wasn't always so. Back in the 1880's, the struggle between labor and management over limiting the working day was fierce, and sometimes deadly. In Milwaukee, the loss of life was even more tragic because it was, in some respects, a civil war between members of the Polish community.

The events of April 30 – May 5, 1886, which culminated in the Bay View Massacre are too complex to adequately discuss in a Featured Profile. However, they must at least be outlined in order to discuss the role of Andrzej Boncel.

Andrzej Boncel was born in the Province of Posen, in what was then Germany, in November, 1860. He emigrated to Milwaukee in February, 1870. He left Milwaukee in 1878, but then returned three years later in 1881.  He was a master carpenter by trade and at some point became a labor leader.  There were two main unions in Wisconsin at the time: the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor. The Knights of Labor, led in Wisconsin by Robert Schilling, was composed mostly of unskilled workmen, and its largest component was the Polish Assembly. It was to this unit that Andrzej Boncel was affiliated.

May Day, 1886 saw strikes across the county in support of the eight-hour workday. Milwaukee was perhaps second only to Chicago in the severity of its strikes. As the work-stoppages in Milwaukee gained momentum over the next few days, the number of strikers rose dramatically, and the number of factories still operating shrank. Soon, it seemed like there was only one workshop still open, the rolling mill in Bay View. That factory became the target of the Polish Assembly, and other strikers, on May 4, 1886. It was the high point of the demonstrations. Hundreds of striking workers walked four-abreast down Kinnickinnic Ave to the rolling mill. The following is the story as told by a special edition of the Milwaukee Journal on May 4, 1886:

The committee headed by Andrzej Boncel entered the plant while, somewhat ominously, the state National Guard (including the Kosciuko Guard composed of members of the Milwaukee Polish-American Community) began de-training just outside. The arrival of the troops did not improve the situation. On the contrary, it grew more tense as the crowd became more adamant that the plant should close, and management, located in Chicago but kept in touch by telegraph, dug in its heals and insisted that it would not. Meanwhile, the labor committee continued its work inside the plant. The workers there were at first against the strike. However, by noon, the committee had convinced them to put down their tools. Mr. Parkes, the local supervisor of the plant, going against the orders of management in Chicago but perhaps bowing to reality, decided to shut down. Violence, at least for the moment, was averted. 

Unfortunately,  matters did not end there.  Continued demonstrations at the rolling mills on the next day ended tragically when members of the state militia fired into the crowd, killing seven people, some innocent bystanders.

It is not known what happened to Andrzej Boncel immediately after this incident. He does not appear to be one of those arrested.

In February, 1887, he married Rose Domachowski, a member of a large family that had arrived from Pomerania in 1881.

Andrzej's accomplishments did not end in 1886.  By 1888, he has moved into publishing. He had become the president of the corporation which put out the Polish-language daily, the Dziennik Polski. At some point in his life, he will also found the Polish-language weekly, Orzel Bialey -''White Eagle, and be involved in another Polish-language weekly, the Opeikun.

Also, at least by 1890, Andzej Boncel has become involved in politics. He first ran (unsuccessfully) for alderman as an independent endorsed by the Republicans. His next bid for that office, as a Democrat, bears fruit.  Then, in 1894, he is elected as a Democrat from the 12^th District to the Wisconsin State Assembly where he served on the Ways and Means Committee.

Unfortunately, Andrzej Boncel's accomplishments end too early when he dies of “lung troubles,” at age 51 in 1901, just a few years after his term in Assembly. At the time of his death, he was serving as a garbage inspector for the City of Milwaukee.  He left his wife, Rose, and his daughter, Wanda, surviving.

By 1910, Rose and Wanda have moved into the rectory of St. Vincent de Paul Church, where Rose's brother, the Rev. Michael Domachowski, is pastor and the Rev. Felix Goral, is his Assistant. (Both will be the subjects of future Featured Profiles.) Maybe exhibiting some of the same traits that served her father as a labor leader and politician, Wanda takes up acting and becomes a leading actress in the Milwaukee's foremost Polish-American amateur acting society, the Paderewski Dramatic Association. (Wanda's 1st cousin, 2x removed, Darlene Lucht, will make it to Hollywood as a professional actress.) Wanda will eventually marry Leo (or Leon) Slawny and have two children of her own before dying early at the age of 37.

Trivia: The Thomas General Store at Old World Wisconsin was donated at the behest of Laura (Wilson) Slawny, the widow of Andrzej Boncel's grandson, Chester Slawny.

Relation to Last Featured Profile (Frank Boncel):  Uncle

Path From Last Featured Profile:  Frank Boncel to his father, Jan (John) Boncel, to his brother, Andrzej (Andrew) Boncel 

Sources

"A.H. Boncel Dead," Milwaukee Journal, October 21, 1901, pg. 1

Fink, Leon,  Workingmen's Democracy: the Knights of Labor and American Politics at pg. 208.

"Old Man Weber Tells Labor's Story in State" Milwaukee Journal, August 16, 1942, p. 1.

"Owners Want Store to Go to Museum," Milwaukee Journal, June 4, 1991

State of Wisconsin Blue Book, Volume 1895, p. 686

"They Shoot!",  Milwaukee Journal, Special Edition, May 4, 1886

Watrous, Jerome Anthony, Memoirs of Milwaukee County, p.620.

The Search for John Peksa - An Exampe

I've been busy this week. I started out doing research on the Sobczak family name. There appear to be a fair number of Sobczaks in Milwaukee, but I only had one that was connected to the tree: Valentine Sobczak.  He was on the tree because he had married Cecylia Fons, a member of the extensive Milwaukee Fons family.   I hoped that by doing more research on Valentine Sobczak, who was connected to the tree, I might be able to attach other members of the Sobczak family. Unfortunately, I didn't get very far. When I looked into it, I found that Valentine Sobczak had been born in Illinois and the two siblings listed in his death notice still resided there at the time of his death. Therefore, it did not appear there would be any close connection to other Milwaukee Sobczak families. Nevertheless: I added the following family names to the tree: Korczynski, Malkowicz

Next, I wanted to do further research on the names listed in the “Rumble at St. Vincent's” news article I posted last weekend. I already knew about my Kitzke relations that were listed in the article. I also knew a little bit about the Philipp (sometimes Phillipp or Filip) family because of my research into my second great uncle Frank Kitzke whose second wife, Mary Klinkosz Kitzke, had been previously married to August (Filip) Philipp. I suspected that the Frank Philipp mentioned in the article was probably related to August Filip. The easiest way to check that connection was to find a family tree on the internet, and when I checked the family trees at RootsWeb World Connect I found just what I was searching for: a family tree that showed the connection between Frank Phillipp and August Filip. I added some if the related families that I found on that family tree: Bejrowski, Binkowski, Litzau, Perschewski, Plichta.

Of the other names listed in the "Rumble" article, “Peksa” seemed the most-promising because it looked familiar, so that's the one I picked to research. Now, to me, the most important piece of information is the date of death. (My research on John Peksa will show why.) I have found that the most consistent place to find a date of death is the on-line records of the Milwaukee Catholic Cemeteries. Doing that search, I found the burial records for a John Peksa including his date of death. Armed with that knowledge, I was able to find his death notice by searching the Milwaukee Journal back-editions which are available on Google News. That turned out to be the key because I discovered that John Peksa had a sister named Josephine Saskowski. I knew that there was a Jennie Saskowski already connected to the tree. She was the wife of Stephen Fons. (If the “Fons” name seems familiar to you, it is because I mentioned it just a couple of paragraphs ago. Jennie Saskowski Fons was in the same family tree that had the Sobczak that I searched above. Theses are the types of the unexpected connections that I run into all the time and what makes this work so interesting to me.)

Anyway, my goal was in sight: if I could connect Jennie Saskowski Fons with Josephine Peksa Saskowski, I would then have the link I needed to make John Peksa part of the tree. So, I repeated for Josephine Peksa Saskowski, the procedure I had just used for John Peksa. I returned to Milwaukee Catholic Cemeteries On-line, got a date-of-death, and then searched the appropriate editions of the Milwaukee Journal to find a death notice. Doing this, I discovered that Jennie Saskowski Fons was actually the daughter of Josephine Peksa Saskowski. Viola! Connection made. I confirmed the connection by searching the on-line records of Family Search.  Finding the marriage records of both John Peksa and Josephine Peksa Saskowski allowed me to confirm that they were brother and sister and also gave me the names of their parents.  I then did further research to flesh out that family more.

Names added: Hahnke, Krzysko, Lawniczak, Osinska, Polachek, Sachala, Shully, Szulakiewicz, Wojtecka

In the future, my status up-dates won't be nearly this extensive. However, I thought for this first time, it might be helpful to other Milwaukee researchers to show some of my tricks.